Hephaestus' Favorite Stories Of The Week

from the favorites-of-the-week dept

In human history, we have people who stand out. These are the people that
believe in community, that fight oppression, that innovate, that create the next
big thing sometimes with out even knowing it. That's who I've chosen to highlight in Techdirt posts from the past week.

The people around you and the community you build is important. Community
Is About Enabling People To Be Heard. Everyone wants to be a part of
something larger, something greater than themselves. Unless you have a huge ego
and just want to be worshipped.

For standing up to those who wish to oppress, I give serious Kudos
To Twitter For Not Just Rolling Over When The US Gov't Asked For Info.
Some of what Twitter did comes from doing what is right and just and maintaining
trust. And some of it comes from the fear of financial loss. In the world of
business on the internet, they are related. People now talk at the speed of light,
so if you break the trust everyone knows almost immediately. This brings me to
three givens for internet community, if you lose the trust, you fail to
innovate, or if you get bought
up by Rupert Murdoch, you lose the community.

Small innovations that occur as part of a larger trend are often overlooked by
incumbent businesses. One such trend is the rise of low cost, high quality
digital cameras. While the iPhone is does not have the best video quality, a Korean
Director Shot a Movie With Just iPhones. The movie is 30 minutes long and
seems to be more of a publicity stunt targeted at iWhatever fanbois than a
serious attempt at film making. This puts the fact that films and TV shows can
be made on a cellphone in the public mind. Combine that with YouTube extending
the length of allowable videos and you have a serious disruption waiting to
happen. It is only a matter of time before someone does a TV series about a
robot on an Android, just for the publicity it will generate.

I have great hope for the next couple of years. Slowly we are seeing things
change, sometime for the worse -- sometimes for the better. On one side, we see the
incumbents in several industries fighting the changes that are occuring with
lawsuits, and laws designed to stop the advancements being made. On the other
side, we see small incremental changes being made in reaction to these laws and
lawsuits. Information technology, open source, online communities like Facebook
and Linkedin, changes in the way we find information, all marching forward at a
very rapid and predictable rate. We see existing disruptive trends accelerating,
and new ones occuring all the time. None of which can be stopped, just slowed
down a little.

There are certain things a human needs in life; doing something they love, doing it well... but most importantly being recognized for it.
-George Carlin

That being said, its great to be part of something if that's your plum. It's far more notable and meaningful to the individual if they are recognized, let alone immortalized. That is not EGO it's noble.

I've been an avid reader of TD for a few years now. I don't comment much because I have a hard time expressing myself in writing but I sure learn a lot here. I sometimes disagree with Hephaestus, however, I very much enjoyed this write up. You go Hep!

Re:

"I've been an avid reader of TD for a few years now. I don't comment much because I have a hard time expressing myself in writing but I sure learn a lot here. I sometimes disagree with Hephaestus, however, I very much enjoyed this write up. You go Hep!"

Thanks, so how do you disagree with me? I will take on any questions, and will change my view of Intellectual property, and where it is going based on data, not rhetoric. So lets talk. Feel free to change my mind on the following, or anything else I have commented on in the past.

--The GE sale of NBCU is good for GE, but bad for Comcast. Shows, like music, are going to "singles" making TV networks irrelevent.

--The final 3 major record labels will fail in the next 5 years due to debt, failing to reduce expenses, and someone buying up the EMI catalog. The EMI catalog sale has two possible scenarios both leading to the failure of the record labels. Purchase by Google or Apple leading to a price war (apple at $0.29 USD, or google partialy free with some sales and ads), or a major label purchasing the catalog and going into serious debt causing an acceleration of the failure of the big 3.

--Like in the 1950's, and pre CD and video tape, the movie studios will (for the most part) only make money off of the theater experience in 5-10 years. This will be due to cost reductions, competition for screen space from outside hollywood, and the lack of adaptabily of hollywood.

--In the next one to three years someone will figure out the music and video promotion piece online. Resulting in major airplay for some currently unknown band. This will make the majors only hold (promotion) on monopolizing new bands obsolete. More than likely this will come from the P2P arena or from social media.

--Online music sales have peaked at the current price point. This has lead people to other sources and will result in a reduction of online sales in the US over the next year.

--The high cost of pharma and the push for even higher prices world wide through IP laws will cause a backlash. Facebook, twitter and other social media will more than likely be a leading factor in this revolt against Pharma price hikes.

--etc

So lets start a discussion on this and ignore the people that live under bridges.

Re: Re:

I don't disagree with anything in your write up. Just sometimes your opinion is different than mine, I think that's good, we need different views to judge if our opinions are within reason. That's why I'm here, to tweak my opinion with different ideas. I see a huge spectrum of intelligence, from very smart to ignorance to idiotic. For most of my life I didn't care about intelligence, now that I'm old(er), I have a hunger for it and I can find it here with subjects that I never thought or heard of So even if I disagree with your opinion, it's still valid and helpful to me.

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Everything interest me at least a little. What blows my mind is the complexities of copyright and the extreme silliness of a lot of patents. Throw in trademark and it nearly melts me down to see how little the supposed experts know in any of the three subjects. Is your day job a politician? You don't have to resort to name calling. :D

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Thank you very much :) Being compared to him just made me grin ear to ear.

"where he'd write what he thought was going to happen and then check back in ten years."

Normally I am balls accurate when it comes to predicting when a country, company, or trend is going to fail. Real estate with in a month, various techno bubbles in the stock market all with in two weeks, Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, all of which are easy to time and know when and where to invest.

But the record labels and TV studios have been basically kicking my ass. Every time I make a prediction they do something more self defeating than the last time. Which forces me to revise my estimates downward and shorten the time they have remaining as viable businesses. My original fail date for the big 5 record labels was 2025, now for the final 3 its 2015 plus or minus a year.

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Forgot to mention something ...

The sale of the EMI catalog may not happen due to price. Which will accelerate the artist abandonment rate at the remaining three major labels. Who wants to work for a failing business? It will also cause the copyright reclamation rate by artists to increase as they see this as a sinking ship.

Re: I agree, people matter

"Twitter is not a person. Twitter did not decide anything. Somebody(s) that work at Twitter made a great decision. There were probably some other somebody(s) there that disagreed with them."

Thats splitting hairs. Twitter is an organization of people, that made a great descision. On this we agree.

"You want to build a better future, or even believe that one is possible? Start believing in the real people that are doing good things.Start holding real people accountable when they do bad things."

Slowly but surely this is happening. Sites like OpenSecrets.org tell us who is paying for which politicians votes. Sites like www.govtrack.us/users/trackers.xpd and projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/ allow us to see what polticians are voting for. What is needed is a facebook-twitter-whatever app to pull it all together for people. Considering that my numbers say just under 700 million people will be on facebook one year from now, it could be a game changer in US (and world) politics.

Re: I agree, people matter

in a political world setting where corporate sponsorship of new bills is running amok and corporations have been given the green light to associate campaign contributions with free speech, its not surprising to see more and more people pointing to a corporate entity and ascribing persona to their actions.
Would it be great to point at someone within that organization and say 'hey, that guy made a stand up decision'? yes it would, but i think disappointment simply because you dont really have that one person within the organization to point at is not the best way to view it when it doesnt really matter who it was, they still made the right choice.
if that person wants to be given credit for making that decision within the organization they need to stand up and take credit for it... otherwise the credit goes to the organization the same way that organizations take heat when they make mistakes or bad choices.

I am a mother of six children. five boys and one girl. we have moved so many times i couldnt count.we are in need of a place we can call home.in the town we live in there are some homes that are 15 to 20 thousand. they may need some work but we wouldnt mind.if you can find it in your hearts to help us we would forever be greatful. thank you and god bless you all